TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE MEANING OF THE ARGYLLSHIRE ELECTION. THE stars in their courses are fighting against Mr. Chamberlain. Just at the moment when he has asked the British people to give up an economic policy which has enriched it for half-a-century the War Com- mission publishes a Report which fills the classes who might have supported him with slow-burning indignation. "These, then, they say," are the men of foresight and business knowledge who tell us that unless we accept their economics we shall all be ruined. Why, the War Office would have ruined any factory in the kingdom, not to mention any State less wealthy than Great Britain." You hear the substance of this opinion in every place where men congregate, in every club, at every "ordinary," in every train ; and yet Mr. Chamberlain expects those who utter it to fight for this Cabinet against the common people, to prove to the latter that the men who managed the South African War are of necessity more far-sighted than them- selves. They will need proof, for at present, while devoid of prejudice against Mr. Chamberlain personally, they hear of his proposal to tax food in the hope of raising wages with stares of surprise. Read in the Daily Mail of last Saturday the evidence so carefully collected by its pedes- trian Commissioner sent out to inquire as to average opinion, and consider what it means. It means that throughout the North, where Mr. Chamberlain is certainly powerful, the common folk, labourers as well as artisans, are entirely unattracted by his proposal, do not believe in its merits, and will vote against it, as they have just done in Argyllshire. Argyllshire is not a Radical county. It is a county with a great deal Of Anti-Radical feeling, the result in part of disap- pointed hopes, in part of a traditionary respect for the owners of the soil, in part of a strong dislike of Little Englandism ; yet in Argyllshire the moment the economic question was raised every other consideration was thrust aside, the voters turned round in hundreds, and the Unionist candidate, whose election was considered certain, was rejected by a majority of 1,586. It will be the same all through Scotland, for in Scotland even the common folk retain an interest in the past, and remember quite well the effects of Protection both on wages and on the price of food. Nor will it be different in England. The • poorer people will reject the proposal, as founded on an entire ignorance of their wants and hopes ; and, as we said many weeks ago, the Unionist party will be crushed under what the Americans call a "land-slide," an irresistible and unexpected popular vote. It is all very well to argue that this, if true, will be a result of mis- representation. The common folk, with their brutal direct- ness, will say that Mr. Chamberlain was perfectly clear, that he did say he must tax bread and meat to conciliate the Colonies, and that the promises made for him subse- quently about tea, tobacco, and sugar are, as electioneering promises, a little ridiculous. In the judgment of most working men, the women pay the Tea-tax, tobacco is a luxury for themselves alone, not for their households, and sugar is neither here nor there, not one in ten being aware of the heat-giving qualities of that article. The people, the true plebs, will say that their bread and meat are to be made dearer for the benefit of men much better off than themselves—the belief that a Colonist is always well fed is universal—and they will not have it. They will break with the Unionists sooner.
That result of Mr. Chamberlain's proposals, which we regard as inevitable, may prove of historic importance. It was one of the less noticed advantages springing from the uprising of the Unionist party that it renewed the link, broken by the strife over the old Corn-laws, between the masses, who are the substance of the country, and the classes, who ought to lead them. The people found themselves in harmony with the ideas of their" superiors." They were just as determined that Ireland should not be allowed to secede as the House of Lords was. They were as proud of the Empire, and the position ill-defined in that word because we have not one to express the leadership of a fourth of mankind, as the City itself is. They were as resolute that, being engaged in war, they would not be beaten as the stiffest old Tory officer in the country. The classes and the masses had been sad together, and glad together, and proud of the same things. The nation ceased for a moment to be divided into castes, and became united by virtue of common difficulties and common aspirations. The country became one, and the people capable of things which are possible only when they are united, capable, for example, of trying that colossal experiment, the Irish Land Purchase Bill, without a hot discussion upon the comparative honesty of English and Irish tenants. With Mr. Chamber- lain's proposal that unity may disappear. We do not think it will, for as the controversy proceeds we expect the classes to see clearly that nothing so un-Con- servative as a sudden departure from an internal policy sanctioned by its results for more than half-a-century ever was sprung upon a country ; but still, it may be made to appear at the election that the classes and the masses are opposed, and the horrid old crop of sus- picions such as find expression in the" Corn-Law Rhymer's " terrible "People's Anthem "—the suspicion, before all, that those who have care nothing for those who have not —may be once more revived. We see the operation of that suspicion in Germany, and we can conceive no greater political evil. It will shatter, for one thing, the power of that alternative party, the Unionist, which is absolutely necessary to the security of the Empire, and make the large improvements that are required in our organisation—the universal training to arms, for example—entirely hopeless until forced on us by some huge disaster.
Nobody seems to think anything of this great misfortune, this shattering of the party which, whatever its faults or failures—and it has certainly not shone in administrative work, and has not redeemed its promise to be efficient —has so nearly reconciled the body of the people to true Conservatism ; but as time goes on we shall find that we have lost an instrument of great power, ; which has rid us of the old Toryism, the Toryism of privilege, and replaced it by a truer Conserva- tism, the Conservatism which does not break with the past except for grave reason, the Conservatism which distrusts abstract ideas, the Conservatism which doubts, as Mr. Bagehot once put it, whether the equality which means that everybody shall have one boot is worth the loss involved in putting the social system into a melting- pot. The destruction of this party seems to us to add greatly even to the huge loss which we shall sustain if we abandon the principle of Free-trade. That has given us wealth ; but the other might have given us the social peace without which we shall never be able so to organise our freedom as to make of it the source of power which it might in happier circumstances have become. A man can do nothing till brain and body agree, and how are they to agree while they perpetually suspect one another ? How are the peoPle to be made to believe that the governing, or at all events the leading, classes are with them heart and soul while those classes are taxing bread, and placing meat, already far too dear, almost beyond their reach. The converts to Protection say that it is all the fault of Mr. Chamberlain's opponents for discussing his proposals before they have been formulated ; but was it we or he who placed them before the country in that premature fashion ? He could have thought them out, and given them to the country entire just as well as not, and in failing to do it he gave up the right to complain that he was unfairly assailed because for the first time in his life he was not entirely ready. For we would far rather discuss anything else, argument about the truth of the multiplication-table being wasteful of energy; but is it, we ask, after last week's experience, wholly for Mr. Chamberlain's advantage that, his proposals should be left to be discussed by the farmers and cotters of the counties as they have been by those of Argyllshire ? Secluded as the latter are from the influence of London papers, they do not seem to find the new proposals satisfactory.
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